Ripley Democrat Craig Fitzhugh, the minority leader of the Tennessee House of Representatives, talks here about the subject of Medicaid expansion on the chamber floor Jan. 29.

Reading from a reporter’s Q&A with Phil Bredesen published in the Nashville Ledger last fall, Fitzhugh tells fellow House members that the former governor, a Democrat who made significant cuts to the state’s TennCare rolls in the mid 2000s, in fact now favors expanding eligibility for the government-financed insurance program for low-income Tennesseans.

Republicans, who dominate both houses of the state’s General Assembly, have resisted Medicaid expansion and refused to take the money the federal government is offering to expand the rolls under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.